This was my 3rd project with Haypi over in China, and yet again, it was ace! This time around they wanted me as the core concept artist to flesh out the style and overall look and feel of Haypi Dragons. The main gameplay mechanic of this game is similar to Worms in many ways, but is backed up with a giant MMO world and play structure. Its fantastically addictive! The guys at Haypi needed me to create the main characters, environment styling, animations, branding, UI styling and core menus. From here they took the project in house and expanded it into the monster game that it is. I HIGHLY recommend a play as its got me hooked! Also, you can see all the UI and menu work over in the design section.

Epic doesn't really cover this project, in fact it doesn't even come close. I've worked in the design, illustration and games industries for about 12+ years now, and have worked with some of the biggest names around...but nothing has ever touched the scale of this amazing project. Trenches 2 is little short of gargantuan...in every way. Trenches 1 was a HUUUUUUGE hit and sold more than a million copies worldwide, and that game seems tiny compared to this. I was the creative director and main artist for T2 from the roots up. Concept art, character art, environment art, menus, UI, branding, animation, promotional materials, you name it. This project pushed my skills WAY beyond their old limits and moulded many new abilities that I never thought I'd have. I want to thank Thunder Game Works for choosing me on this as it really is the greatest creative accomplishment of my career. Thanks guys! Oh, and to top it all off, this is probably the deepest, most challenging and most amazing iPhone game I've ever wrapped my hands around. Buy it, play it and love it!

This was SUCH a wonderful project! I love illustrating characters, but this grizzly bear for Cascadia has to be one of my all times faves! Cascadia Games have quite a meaning behind their name, so there was a lot to accomplish within the brands feel. The bear couldn't be too cartoony, or too realistic and had to portray both strength, courage and power without looking mean, nasty or overly scary. I ended up taking a lot of influence from Disney with this character, as those guys always manage to make great heroic characters that give off both gentle and strong vibes. You know how Simba goes from being a shaking little kitten to becoming a powerful heroic Lion that defends his friends? Well, that was what I wanted the Cascadia bear to do. This was a wonderful project as I explored a style I've never experimented with before. Very fulfilling! Overall this was a fantastic challenge and one that both the client and his fan base were really happy with!

Rather than the usual video game news site, Gaming Dead is geared toward the darker side of the games industry, the horror genre! The site needed a new, grim character based brand and a creepy menacing site design too. We settled on the idea of a scalped, brain exposed zombie office worker! What an ugly fella this guy turned out to be! With the character branding sorted, we moved onto creating his home and playground, the website! This was so much fun to work on as it’s been ages since I created a zombie character. So if you like the darker side of the gaming world take a wander over and have a read. Great little project!

This character design formed part of a much larger project, but was the starting point for the whole package. This little dude formed the 'A' in the logo for Games Faction and also ended up getting a couple of little sidekicks plus a simple environment too...great fun!

This was one huge and thoroughly enjoyable project! When I was tasked with creating the entire virtual world of Happy Oasis I was excited to say the least. Its huge! Maps, landscapes, trees, plants, animals, characters, animations, props, buildings, you name it. There was SO much to create! As you can imagine, this took quite a few months of some seriously intense illustration and animation. I’ve really been enjoying all these culturally diverse projects of late, as after creating Caves site focused mainly for the Japanese market, to move onto a project directed at the Middle Eastern market was a marvellous creative challenge. It’s so nice to work outside of what you know from time to time as it really expands you as a creative. Amazing fun. The game has been a HUGE hit in the Middle East and has seen coverage on the BBC news and Forbes to mention just a few. The impact has been huge. It’s so great to see the game doing so well!

Say hello to Skelly! On a recent character branding project, my first idea was Skelly, which was very warmly received, but unfortunately deemed a little too young for the audience (the replacement character brand will be launched soon as reeeeeal nasty :) but as I was so attached to this little guy, I decided to add him to the pages of Fully Illustrated. I may look into making a game based around him....hmmmm. Any dev's out there making a new game?

Accidental Fish, what a killer name and project! As we all know, creating characters is what I love most, and when a blooming good brief lands on my desk, giving me some rather lovely creative freedom, I enjoy it all the more! I was given the name and a request to go crazy. Accidental Fish wanted my unadulterated creativity. To take their name and visualise it into something fun, playful and painfully wacky...so I did! While being a very literal interpretation of the name, I wanted the character to be as cute as he was goofy, so with his wonky eye’s, and a battered body he still holds a cute persona. Great fun! Accidental Fish make apps for the iPhone and iPad, so why not pop over for a quick look!

When I was first contacted by the guys from Havoc about their new project, swrve, I got rather excited! I mean, let’s face it, who in the games industry hasn’t heard of Havoc! I was all ears! They already had the swrve brand in place, something that had been worked up at an earlier stage, but they’d decided that they would like it to be accompanied by a character, something to lighten the brands appearance and give off a more friendly vibe. I couldn’t wait! The hummingbird was the core focus of the ideas as it encapsulated their core message, so it was time for me to create it! And what a wonderful creature to visualise.

Viking Bob was due to be our next game following on from Super Turbo Action Pig, but we were beaten to the line by another company. We couldn't believe it when we fell across a game that not only had a Viking as the main character, but also had Viking in the name and was, unbelievably, exactly the same game!!!! If we'd continued with this little game we would definitely been seen as copycats, and that isn't in our nature at all. So, our lovely little Viking Bob has been retired to the pages of history as an official non starter. We may still use him in another game we've been toying with, as lets face it, it'd be a waste not too. But for now, Viking Bob is no more. Sorry Bob.

This was just one of those oddball ideas I had, no particular purpose, no particular point, just little cutesy forest creatures :) I kinda like it when this happens as what gets created is purely for fun, no brief, no requirements, just a creative brain dump.

Stenches, that’s right, you heard it correctly, Stenches, the rotten, zombie infested follow up to the MASSIVE AppStore hit, Trenches! Man this game was the coolest!

I know we’ve all seen a few Zombies on the AppStore, hell, we’ve seen too many Zombies on the AppStore, but I take great pride in knowing that Trenches was one of the first AppStore games to feature these un-dead nasties in its secret unlockable ‘Zombie Horde Mode’. This unlockable was that much of a hit that it has spawned an entire game of its own. I was overjoyed when the guys at Thunder Game Works asked me to create the art for Stenches as Trenches had been a pretty big deal for me and was something I was supremely proud of. So this time around it was time to raise the bar! I really went to town on the visuals for this game, adding in 10x the amount of scenery detail and adding in lots of little touches to the animations.

To add to all this, the particle effects that were added to this game, along with the stellar soundtrack and sound effects have made for a truly killer title. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the early builds, and then nearly fell over when the finished build landed on my desk. Truly brilliant stuff.

Anyway, get your butt over to the AppStore and sample some of this wonderful un-dead infested goodness :)

Fat Cow Games required an all new cartoon illustrated brand and when I was invited to create the guy, I was rather excited...as lets face it, creating a crazy looking fat cow is pretty damn fun! We wanted to inject some craziness into this bovine beast too, to make him a little off the wall, so we decided to let genetic modification do its worst. This cow is a bizarre mix of a bull and a cow, taking the features of both to create an all round badass! Udders and horns, its the future of cattle!

This was a cool little illustration project to create a fun and playful Pukeko! Yep, I'd never heard of the bird either, apparently its native to New Zealand :) Cute little fella. The character is due to be used on a new web project that is currently under development, but my my client was happy for him to be shown off early. I really enjoyed creating this guy, mainly for the fact that I'd never seen one of these birds before, so it wasn't like drawing anything else. Great fun!!

-- Update --
This character has now been purchased by Smart Devil, a company that makes performance batteries for radio controlled cars/planes. He now sits under the name of Smart Devil! Thanks for all the enquiries regarding this guy, he certainly was popular!
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This character has a bit of a sad story attached to him! I was approached by a company to create this guy for a new product, they absolutely loved the character, but when it came to payment time they suddenly disappeared, leaving me high and dry. How rude. So, needless to say, this character is now available to buy, along with all his associated rights. So if you're interested, let me know and we can discuss the costs. Such a shame as he turned out so well. Oh, and if you happen to see this guy being used anywhere online, please do let me know as I fear this certain company may have copied him to use for themselves. Grrrrr.